These “paintings” by Shane McAdams remind me images taken with an electron microscope of paramecium or algae strands. I say “paintings” not with disdain, but because they are actually all produced using various common ball point pens on a resin surface. The compositions are excellent and I love the layered and unfocused quality the resin gives to some of the strokes and lines.

Hypercolored beach guidos, fire breathing monsters, Christians hell bent on hedonism and bearded ladies are just a few of the colorful characters that inhabit the canvases of the work of Ana Benaroya. I really enjoy the warped and skewed forms she creates, and am especially fond of her gestural portraits – blobs of colors and swaths of dots and patterns are then embellished with wild eyes and bright red lips. Capturing the absurd and the abstract in fantastic ways.

This week, “sneaker freakers” and fans of the beloved 80’s Back To The Future film trilogy finally saw the realization of one of the holy grails of movie-fashion concept designs: The Nike Air MAG. A prop designed and used for the second installment of the film, the Air MAGs (or Magnetic Anti-Gravity) were fantastic futuristic sky tops complete with lights and auto-lacing technology. They were of course only an idea in a film about a supposed future, but fans fell in love with them and hoped, prayed and even petitioned to see their fateful production.

This week, Nike, in partnership with Universal Films and the Michael J. Fox Foundation released a limited line of 1500 pairs of the Nike Air MAG to be placed on eBay for charity auction to raise funds for the Fox foundation seeking a cure for Parkinsons disease. All of this is wonderfully explained on Nike’s new microsite Back4theFuture.com, a cleverly devised website to promote not only the legend and spirit of the films and the storied shoe, but also aiming to shed light on the affliction of Parkinsons in a witty and encouraging way. The site, which I believe was designed by Nike’s longtime agency of record Wieden and Kennedy, follows a similar structure to the previous Nike Better World site, leading the visitor downward through a series of automated tiles displaying messaging and finally landing at an interactive display video complete with a cameo from The Doc himself.

The site is clean and brisk, with bold messages set in Nike’s 80’s trademark tightly kerned bold Futura to give a perfect retro-future look and feel. Also, be sure to check out “The Continuum”, a running blog of sorts on the site that collects news, articles, events and social network activity related to the release.

It’s hard to believe that 9/11 happened a decade ago. While many memories from ten years ago fade away, that event is still so fresh in my mind. Time magazine has recently launched a nicely designed new site devoted to “Beyond 9/11” – the stories and the people that were instrumental in the minutes, hours, days and years following that tragedy. It acts like an interactive memory cloud, a way to listen and learn from others and to remember their stories.

Brooklyn’s Pop Chart Lab is back with a brand new print and this time they set their well honed sights on “The Evolution of the Video Game Controller”. Like most of PCL’s designs, they chart and document a varied and crowded topic, in an extremely detailed and organized way. Be sure to also check out their other great prints, especially “A Visual Compendium of Notable Haircuts…” and my personal favorite, “The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools.”

Landscapes, along with portraits and still lifes are the holy grail of traditional painting. So to see a classic format using the same tools but so obviously created in a more modern fashion seems like a revelation. Mapping man’s persuasion on his terrain, Philip Govedare‘s series entitled Excavation, takes a macro approach to it’s landscapes – giant, sweeping washes of color that appear almost like abstract color studies at first, are in fact attempts to showcase the enormity of our destruction and ability to reform our world to our whims. What I found most impressive is the perspective, as if you are peering down from an airliner in mid-flight, thousands and thousands of feet above the ground, a view earlier landscape artists never had the pleasure of knowing.

Patterns, structures and environments come crashing together in the surrealist aftermath paintings by Ricardo Gonzalez Garcia. Ricardo describes his works as a meeting ground of multiple dimensions and I couldn’t agree more. Rooms and architectural elements dissolve into flat, 2D spaces inhabited by color swashes and detailed ornamentation which gives the works a woozy, dream-like quality.

About the Byczek blog

The Byczek Blog was the personal blog of Bryan Byczek. "Was" because it is now shuttered. But fear not, this blog may be closed but in it's wake is a bigger, better website filled with lots more creative inspiration by a great team of talented folks. Visit the new site here: The Exaltation